Three things that can define your leadership

If you are a born leader, you might already be an awesome boss who is loved by everyone you work with and create stellar results for your company. However, most people lack the right mix of charisma and experience to become a great leader. It’s more likely that you become a boss as you progress through your career, and then learn from your mistakes (while your employees suffer).This can be an extremely difficult process as we are often too preoccupied with ensuring our success (or survival) at the firm, and often forget to examine our own behaviour as bosses.

If you want to avoid being the same bad boss that you hated before, and if you want to be a truly successful leader who is well respected, then this guide might be of value to you. Below, we have handpicked and combined some of the best advice that we’ve gathered from leaders from amazing organisations like Google and leading sports teams.

And it’s quite simple. Being a great boss comes down to three main factors:

Trust

Any organasation that’s worthy and valuable is built on trust. A boss must trust his employees to do their job well, and employees must trust their boss to have their best interest in mind. Without trust, communications become inefficient, processes become prolonged, and stress levels spike for everyone. And, stress is counterproductive.

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The New England Patriots, an American football team in Massachusetts, is arguably one of the best sports teams of our era. In a documentary about their success, the overwhelmingly consistent theme was that each member of the team trusted one another to do his job. They’ve spent thousands of hours with each other, going through hardships together, and building trust and respect for what each other is capable of doing for the team. This included both the players and the coaches.

Any business or organisation that hopes to succeed need to be built on trust like this. This allows them to operate as one well-oiled machine that can block and tackle any problems with ease and efficiency. The ultimate effect of such an environment is that everyone works hard, innovates, and achieves more than they are expected to without needing to worry about office politics.

To summarize, to build trust, you need to do three things well:

1. Clearly define everyone’s job,
2. Empower your employees, and trust them to do their jobs well,
3. Help everyone focus on their responsibility.

Care

Whether you like it or not, business is a team sport. And for a team to excel, its members have to form strong bonds that can work out issues and last through tough times. As a boss, it’s your responsibility to make sure this happens, and there’s no better way to achieve this goal than leading through example.

This involves spending time with your employees, learning about who they are and what they care about, and supporting them as much as possible. By getting to know what they care about and what kind of motivations drive them, you can keep your team motivated and invested in your firm’s cause. By understanding their strengths and weaknesses, you can organise your firm in the most efficient way possible by leveraging their strengths and covering for their weaknesses.

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The goal of being a boss is to encourage your employees to do all they can in their jobs instead of simply the minimum of what is required in their jobs. Only people who are motivated are capable of doing this. After all, why would anyone go out of their way to excel in something they don’t care about? Too many people mistakenly think that paying more money solves every problem; this is not true. If you show them that you deeply care about their well-being (physically, emotionally and intellectually), they will return the favour.

Below is a list of some tangible things you can do to make sure this happens:

• Spend time with your employees outside of work settings, especially in casual settings.
• Ask your employees about what they do for fun, or important things that are happening in their lives.
• When delegating work, explain to them why something needs to get done, make them care, and involve them in decision making and in the improvement of the task.

Radical candour

Kim Scott, an ex-Googler who is now a respected leadership coach, emphasises a concept called radical candour. It’s a mix of deeply caring about someone while being direct and honest. Below chart is a great summary of how this works.

Essentially, what she means is that if you care deeply about your employees, you should be brutally honest with them about everything. This not only involves giving out open praise or criticism, but also being open to being challenged, critiqued and evolving yourself. By both being fully committed to other people’s well-being, you can create an environment where honest communication is both welcomed and expected.

For instance, consider a scenario wherein you do not critique an under-performing employee out of care. If this situation persists for too long, it may cause tension in the office as his/her peers get frustrated and ultimately lead to an implosion of corporate culture (if not having some of your best people leaving the firm). Instead of firing that particular employee, you could have prevented chaos by critiquing him/her early and honestly so he/she could improve.

Also Read: Your guide to creating a unified remote work culture

In order to do this, there are few tips that you can consider for your own work environment:

• Praise openly, critique in private: You should make sure you protect your employees’ self-respect.
• Make it easy for your employees to critique your own performance: Anyone should be able to raise issues or problems.
• Make backstabbing impossible: Do not tolerate behaviour that destroys an honest and caring culture.
• Be transparent: Make sure people know what their jobs are, that they are empowered to do them well, and that you have their back.
• Conflict resolution: When your employees have conflicts with one another, have them resolve the issue in front of you.

Parting thoughts

As you may have already noticed, the aforementioned three qualities are interdependent with one another. By caring about your employees, you can build trust in your team. By building trust, you can empower your employees to take full ownership of their work and innovate consistently. At the same time, you maintain the balance of care, trust and success by creating a radically honest environment that holds everyone accountable for their responsibilities and behaviours.

You should always remember, as a boss, it’s your jobs to keep your people motivated and invested in the company’s mission. Often, it’s much more effective to build an emotional bond with a team than to throw money around in an effort to glue together a team that doesn’t want to be together.

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This article originally appeared on ValuePenguin.

The views expressed here are of the author’s, and e27 may not necessarily subscribe to them. e27 invites members from Asia’s tech industry and startup community to share their honest opinions and expert knowledge with our readers. If you are interested in sharing your point of view, submit your post here.

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